YouTube

For the first time, video downloads generated from Google’s YouTube site are no longer 100% free. Rather surprisingly, though, users have greeted the new links to fee-based music and content largely with positive comments, if any.

Google-owned YouTube yesterday abandoned its traditional business model of free content provider, adding links to paid video and audio in such a slick manner that most users either didn’t mind or didn’t even notice.

In a blog post Tuesday, “The YouTube Team” mapped out YouTube’s plans to ultimately evolve into sort of an online shopping mall for audio, video, and print entertainment.

“Today, we’re taking our first steps to providing YouTube users with [instant] gratification, by adding “click-to-buy” links to the watch pages of thousands of YouTube partner videos. Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features. Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products — like songs, books, and movies — related to the content they’re watching on the site,” acknowledged YouTube.

The bloggers disclosed that YouTube will start by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly released video game Spore on videos from Electronic Arts.

“[But] this is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube. Our vision is to help partners across all industries — from music, to film, to print, to TV — offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site,” said The YouTube Team.

Judging from the YouTube home page alone, you might not notice much of a change, if at all. The first hint comes by way of the “What’s New” sidebar, which includes the following:

“Like What You See? Then Click-to-Buy on YouTube. When you view a YouTube video with a great soundtrack, you often see comments from YouTube users asking about the name of the song and where they can download it. Read more in our Blog.”

Of the untold number of users who have actually viewed YouTube’s blog entry, only about 25 had commented when Techachino looked at the site this evening.
“This is a really good idea,” read one typical comment.

A few users, though, weren’t at all pleased by the more commercial direction YouTube is now taking. “Maybe people will actually click on these ‘ads,’” another person wrote in sarcasm.

“Now how about the people posting the videos getting a referral fee? As it looks here, companies get to make money on the consumer once again while the consumer does most of the work to make the videos. (Great for Google, who owns YouTube). Not so good for the wallets of the rest of us,” said another, voicing the opinion that YouTube is now ripping off its long-time user base.

“At least with Amazon, I can create a page of books and get a cut of purchases made through my site. Let your creativity help everyone, not just the bottom line of the mega-corps.”

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Litigants trying to get data on what the video site’s users were watching have backed off somewhat, although YouTube will still have to share some data with Viacom.

Plaintiffs Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England agreed to accept a watered-down version of YouTube’s viewer logs. That version will not include the IP addresses nor the YouTube usernames of the viewers.

Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to turn over this information to Viacom. The media conglomerate had specifically requested information that would have also tied the viewer data to a specific YouTube user.

Viacom has been at the forefront of the copyright fracas involving YouTube: It sued the site for $1 billion in 2007. The Football Association of England followed not soon after, claiming it had identified about 160,000 unauthorized clips of European football programs — viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Privacy advocates and users alike almost immediately slammed Viacom for what they saw as an overreach. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “setback to privacy rights,” while users threatened a boycott of Viacom programming.

However, as the criticism deepened, the media company seemed to back off its original request, saying in a statement that “the personally identifiable information that YouTube collects from its users will be stripped from the data before it is transferred to Viacom.”

Yet Viacom still seemed to want to gain access to users’ private videos, Google’s search technology on YouTube, and specifics on how YouTube identifies videos that may infringe on copyrighted material.

In a post to its company blog, YouTube officials boasted that the judge in the case had sided with the video sharing site.

“We remain committed to protecting your privacy and we’ll continue to fight for your right to share and broadcast your work on YouTube,” it said.

Regardless of Monday’s developments, a resolution in the matter could be a far ways off. Neither case is expected to come to trial until 2009 or 2010, say legal analysts.

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Viacom wants to know if anyone with Google or YouTube happened to push some of the content company’s work onto the video sharing site.

Those who have been concerned about privacy and the idea of Viacom perusing YouTube viewing records include a distinct group of insiders, who may have more reason than most to be concerned about uploads of South Park or The Colbert Report.

CNET said Google is digging in against Viacom after a judge ordered Google to hand over private viewing data. Google wants to anonymize it first, but failed to hammer out an agreement with Viacom on doing so with regards to YouTube employees.

YouTube and Google stand to lose big if Viacom discovered any employees of those firms uploaded Viacom content. CNET said that activity may cost YouTube whatever potential Digital Millennium Copyright Act protection existed for it.

Without that DMCA protection, YouTube’s defense likely falls apart. With a billion dollar case at stake, any uploading by YouTube insiders may cost the site much of what it made when Google acquired it. Add in legal costs, and YouTube could cost Google double what it paid to purchase the site.

Google has long resisted making search data immediately anonymous, opting instead to keep it for 18 months before doing so. Such obstinacy may cost it ten figures in this case.

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VPPA ignored, EFF claims

As part of the discovery process in the ongoing court fight between Viacom and Google, Viacom gained access to the log data for every video viewed on YouTube.

Somewhere within the Viacom arcology, legal researchers will receive the kind of treasure trove of information that online video rivals to YouTube only dream of seeing. Every video viewed, with IP address and user details, becomes another piece of the legal challenge.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation decried the decision by the federal court for the Southern District of New York. EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl said the decision runs counter to the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).

“The Court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube,” said Opsahl. He contended that providing this data to Viacom violates the VPPA where a YouTube username personally identifies the person behind it.

Viacom’s request falls in line with the company’s belief that copyrighted content, and not user-created videos, drives YouTube’s massive traffic and popularity.

In what will likely reverberate around Google HQ, a posting from February 2008 on the Google Public Policy blog argued that an IP address isn’t really a personally identifying piece of information. Judge Louis L. Stanton cited this in his decision.

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Call it a characteristic or a problem, but the longest clips YouTube generally allowed only lasted ten minutes. Now some partners are being encouraged to exceed that and post movie-length videos.

Such things have appeared on YouTube before; the 95-minute “Harold Buttleman, Daredevil Stuntman” showed up almost 11 months ago. They’ve been extremely rare, though, and content creators were stuck with annoying limits. Hulu had a definite lead in this category.

So YouTube’s changing its mind. Michael Learmonth reports that certain content partners have been told, “You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB.”

This isn’t an invitation to post copyrighted content, of course, and knowing YouTube, video quality may remain a problem (see “Stuntman“). Yet viewers are likely to enjoy at least some of the longer clips, and - ulterior motive alert - advertisers are bound to see more ways to hawk their products.

Keep an eye out for extended videos, then, and mind what happens with ads and overall watchability, as well.

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YouTomb, a site focused on tracking all the videos that have been removed from YouTube for copyright violation, is a research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The people who created the site are the MIT Free Culture student group. YouTomb says it,”Continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown.” “The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.” YouTomb records the title of each video that is removed from YouTube along with a description of the video, who uploaded it, when it was taken down and a few screen shots. There are no actual videos that visitors to the site can watch. The site is currently monitoring 223,246 videos and has flagged 4,396 videos that have been taken down for alleged copyright violation. The companies that have removed the most videos include, TV Tokyo Corporation, Viacom International Inc, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and World Wrestling Entertainment. YouTomb says its initial focus is on videos hosted by YouTube, but it is also interested in other video collections. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Web sites are protected from legal action if they remove infringing content after receiving a takedown notice from the copyright holder.

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Sony has confirmed that it is planning to “integrate YouTube functionality in upcoming or existing PlayStation 3 games” and that developers are currently working on such integration.

The new integration will enable gamers to stream capture and upload footage they have recorded while playing games.

“This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates,” explained a YouTube statement.

“Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We’re excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube,” the statement added.

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YouTube says it is changing the way it deals with users who violate its community guidelines.

The video sharing site says it will no longer treat users “who uploads three videos that violate the Community Guidelines over the span of a year the same as someone who uploads those same videos over the course of a week.”

YouTube says its new policy will lift penalties against users who violated its terms of use after six months and that “Accounts that had one or two warnings (as of April 16, 2008) for Community Guidelines (or Terms of Use) violations have been given a clean slate.” The new rules do not apply to copyright violations, which do not expire.

The company said it will still send users who violate its terms of use email notifications but will also display the notice on YouTube the next time they access the site. YouTube says that is due to notifications getting caught in spam filters or going unread.

YouTube is also experimenting with the way it handles users who violate its community guidelines. “What we’ve come up with is to temporarily mute users, so that they can still use the site and watch videos, but they can’t post new content.”

“Right now it is set up to affect users who have two Community Guidelines warnings in a six-month period and will last two weeks.”

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It’s hard to believe data about 2007 is still being released, but a new Hitwise report is interesting, nonetheless. It seems that social networks and YouTube were quite popular last year, with related terms dominating a list of the top ten UK searches.

YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and a two-word version of YouTube (”you tube”) placed third, fourth, fifth, and eighth, respectively, even though none of them showed up at all on the previous year’s list. Such accomplishments are impressive, to say the least. Bebo, meanwhile, held on to its number two spot.

Yet it’s also important to note what happened to less successful properties. Robin Goad writes, “‘ebay’ remains at the top, but other retail-related terms have fallen down the rankings: ‘argos’ and ‘amazon’ remain in the top 10, albeit placed lower, while ‘easyjet’, ‘autotrader’ and ‘ebay uk’ have all dropped out. ‘Old’ media has also suffered, with ‘bbc’ falling three places and ‘cbbc’ departing the top 10.”

Search trends aren’t surefire indicators of profitability, of course, and even traffic may not follow these numbers - people unfamiliar with the spelling of YouTube probably don’t watch many videos online. Still, this is the sort of news that can (and will) be taken straight to advertisers as recession problems continue.

It’s also likely to make AOL happier about its much-questioned acquisition of Bebo.

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